Tag: restaurant

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Sanaa vs. Bobby

By Fran Hill

We live in the age of technology. Nothing proves this more clearly than our television viewing habits. Nobody subscribes to the TV Guide magazines of yesteryear or waits for their favorite program on Thursday night. Streaming and binge watching online is the norm. If you do still have a cable or satellite connection, sports might be the only thing viewed at the time actually aired.

We are guilty of chasing this immediate gratification. We access a few streaming services and have several favorites from the networks that are dutifully recorded. When we have time to relax we pull up a recording, and the current schedule seldom gets a glance. The only exception is Downton Abbey on SDPB, and with its last episode airing Sunday, even this is coming to an end.

However, tonight there will be another exception for our television viewing. We will tune in to the Food Network at 9 p.m. Central, 8 p.m. Mountain, for Beat Bobby Flay. While this isn’t on our regular rotation of programs, it is a must for us to see this particular episode in which Sanaa Abourezk, one of South Dakota’s favorite chefs, is competing.

I met Sanaa online through Twitter many years ago. Social media was in its infancy, and someone had told me it could be good for my blog. I searched out a few people across the state who seemed to have similar interests, and Sanaa made the cut. More importantly, the chef, restaurant owner, cookbook author and blogger interacted. She offered cooking advice when asked, chatted about the weather, shared a love of sushi and laughed at my corny jokes. When I first made my way to her Sioux Falls restaurant, Sanaa’s 8th Street Gourmet, not only did she treat me to delicious Mediterranean foods that I had never tasted, she took time out of her busy day to sit and visit with me while I ate and sent me away with special treats. It was clear that she loves to share her knowledge and incredible food, and also that I could count on Sanaa as a real friend.

So tonight, thanks to the age of technology, I will cheer on this friend from the comfort of my sofa. No matter the outcome, I will feel that Sanaa is the winner. Her cookbooks, cooking classes, restaurant and her blog are all rich with her profound passion for good food and sharing a good life here in South Dakota.

Tabbouleh is one of my favorite offerings at Sanaa’s 8th Street Gourmet. I recreate it often in the summer with parsley from my garden and savor its bright, fresh flavors with hummus and pitas.

Tabbouleh

Tabbouleh can be served in a pita or as a side salad.

(Adapted from Sanaa Abourezk’s Secrets of Healthy Middle Eastern Cooking)

1/2 cup Quick Cooking Bulgur Wheat (I use Bob’s Red Mill)

1 cup water

4 cups finely chopped ripe tomatoes

1 cup finely chopped onion

5 cups finely chopped parsley

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (really, fresh is so much better than bottled stuff)

2 tablespoons olive oil

Bring water to a boil.

Add the bulgur wheat; stir.

Cover and simmer for 12-15 minutes, or until tender.

In a salad bowl, combine the cooked bulgur with the tomatoes, onion and parsley.

(Can be prepared ahead to this point and dressed just prior to serving.)

Drizzle with the lemon juice and olive oil and toss to coat. (6 servings)

Fran Hill has been blogging about food at On My Plate since October of 2006. She, her husband and their three dogs ranch near Colome.

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Molding Ma’amoul

By Laura Andrews

In the November/December issue of South Dakota Magazine, we featured mouthwatering holiday treats from several South Dakota food bloggers. One of my favorites is Sioux Falls restaurateur Sanaa Abourezk. She serves healthy variations on recipes popular in her native Syria and other Middle Eastern countries at Sanaa’s 8th Street Gourmet and shares recipes on her blog, sanaacooks.com.

When I saw her recipe for ma’amoul, a shaped, stuffed cookie made for Christmas, Easter or Eid, I was reminded of a lecture I’d attended at Augustana College earlier this year. Stephen Cusulos is researching Sioux Falls’ Syrian and Lebanese community, which started over one hundred years ago. Though some were Muslim and some were Eastern Orthodox Christians, these immigrants were bound together by the Arabic language and by a common culture. Many were peddlers back in the horse and buggy days, traveling around the region delivering goods to farm families. When automobiles took over, the peddlers set up shop in downtown Sioux Falls, opening up groceries, cafes, candy stores or selling dry goods.

Though Cusulos joked about these immigrants'”gift of gab,” they were surprisingly quiet about their shared culture, at least to the outside world. But it was a different story when they met in each other’s homes to socialize, or in the case of the Muslim immigrants, to worship together. Perhaps they met to make ma’amoul, just as Sanaa’s family did in Syria. Here’s how she describes those gatherings:

My mom used to get together with her friends on a certain day before the Eid to make ma’amoul. One friend would bring the dough, another would bring one kind of stuffing and someone else would bring another kind of stuffing. The rest would bring stories and gossip. The ladies would spend the whole afternoon making the cookies. I can still remember hearing them, talking, laughing and baking.

Ma’amoul

From Sanaa Cooks


Dough

4 cups farina (a type of wheat flour)
1 cups cake flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup warm milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon yeast

Mix farina, cake flour, 1/2 cup of sugar and salt. Add butter and mix well. Dissolve 1 tablespoon of sugar in the warm milk. Add yeast and stir. Let yeast rest for a few minutes, then add to the flour mixture, mixing until the dough is smooth. Add a couple of tablespoons of cold water if needed. Cover and let the dough rest for 1 hour.

Walnut Stuffing

4 cups walnuts
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon orange blossom water

Grind the walnuts, then mix with sugar and orange blossom water.

Date Stuffing

4 cups chopped dates
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon orange marmalade

Add dates, butter and marmalade to a food processor and process until the mixture forms a smooth paste.

Assembly

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. To form the ma’amoul, take a small piece of dough. Make a dent in the middle of the dough to form a cup. Spoon about 1 teaspoon of filling into the cup, then gently close the opening with your fingers. Decorate the top of the ma’amoul by pinching the dough with pastry tweezers or pressing the cookie in a ma’amoul mold. Place your hand under the mold and gently strike the mold on the edge of a table to make the cookie fall in your palm.

Place the ma’amoul on a cookie sheet and bake for 30 minutes, or until lightly browned. Allow cookies to cool for one hour, then dust with powdered sugar and store in a tightly closed container. Makes 50 cookies.


Note: Sanaa also has a gluten-free, vegan version of this recipe on her blog.

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Burgers, Bells, Blooms and Brews

By Laura Andrews

Brookings was recently named one of America’s ten best small towns by livability.com. My husband, Mike, and I visited South Dakota’s fourth largest community a few weeks ago. It didn’t take long to see why Brookings was given high marks.

Our first stop was Nick’s Hamburger Shop, a Brookings institution since 1929. The friendly waitress slipped us each a tank-fried Nickburger on a square of waxed paper. As we munched, we watched locals leave with sacks full of the meaty sandwiches.”This is lunch and dinner,” said one.

Sated for the moment, we walked up and down Brookings’ charming main street, admiring the shops along the way. A friendly postman directed us to the local library a few blocks away, near the Children’s Museum of South Dakota.

An exotic aroma lured us up to the library’s second floor, where Mango Tree Coffee was serving Thai vegetable soup. I opted for a rose lassi, a sweet and floral Indian yogurt drink. The Mango Tree is a calm and cozy spot, perfect for library patrons and the local knitters and crocheters who meet there for Brookings Fiber Guild gatherings. My knitting group in Yankton would be jealous if they knew how good Brookings crafters have it!

Our next stop was an odd choice for a couple of acrophobes — the Coughlin Campanile, South Dakota State University’s belltower. After ducking into the Alumni Center for the key, we climbed 185 steps to the viewing area at the top, stopping frequently to admire Brookings from above. There was even more to admire at the nearby South Dakota Art Museum galleries, where works by Harvey Dunn and Oscar Howe and other artists were on display. It was a real thrill to see The Prairie Is My Garden in real life, and marvel at the way Dunn combined blobs and swirls of pigment to create his iconic scene of early Dakota life. Of course, no visit to SDSU is complete without a trip to their Dairy Bar for a dish of butter brickle and a grasshopper fudge cone.

Mike is an avid gardener, so I had to take him to McCrory Gardens, where we were surprised how much difference a hundred-plus miles makes. The peonies and irises that had already finished blooming in our yard in Yankton were just starting to blossom up north in Brookings. There’s over 25 acres of formal gardens at McCrory plus 45 acres devoted to studying trees and bushes. That’s a lot of plants — all beautifully arranged and tended.

All that walking and fresh air helped us work up a thirst, which we quenched at Wooden Legs Brewing Company. The bevy of beverage options was dazzling (117 bottled beers and 21 on tap), but sadly, only one of the pub’s homebrews was available. Though we were there a few days before Wooden Legs’ grand opening, the Split Rock Creek Pale Ale, K¸hl Blonde Ale, Farmhouse Ale and It’s What We Got IPA were already sold out.”People in this town like to drink,” explained our friendly bartender. We can’t blame them. My pint of Wooden Legs’ Three5Three, a milk stout inspired by Irish brews, was deliciously dark. I would’ve loved another, but we needed to stop by George’s Pizza for gyros and calzones before heading homeward, tired but happy after a busy day of sampling a few of the great things Brookings has to offer.

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Who’s Working on Your Street?

By Bernie Hunhoff

Too often, we forget to appreciate the diverse and talented people who make our South Dakota business and professional communities. Oh, sure, we know those who run for mayor and school board or chair the United Way. But many others labor quietly in the background. We assume they will be here for a long time. And so we take them for granted.

Such was the case with Camtu Thi Tran. She and her husband Robert operated King Dragon Restaurant on Fourth Street in Yankton for many years. They have been successful restauranteurs but we often thought, over egg drop soup or wonton chicken, that with Camtu as hostess they might have been millionaires in downtown Chicago or Los Angeles. She was a great ambassador for Yankton.

She was 39 years old when she died April 3. Two Buddhist monks came from Rochester, Minn., to conduct a funeral service. They wore robes of gold and orange. A kindly fellow in a blue jacket translated at times.

Robert and the children, Roland and Calida, spoke of their lives in Yankton. The restaurant will continue, but it will be different without Camtu. They need and deserve the continued support of the community that has supported them so many years.

This young lady’s untimely death is also a wake-up call for all of us to search out and show appreciation to other unsung heroes and heroines who make our cities work on a daily basis — whether they are serving in businesses, hospitals, prisons, hardware stores, insurance offices or all the other nooks and crannies that make a community. We look for them when we travel to explore cities for features in South Dakota Magazine. But like everyone else, we take them for granted here at home. Camtu worked just a block from our publishing offices, yet we saw her perhaps once a month.

The mourners at her funeral did not understand much of what the Buddhist monks said, but at one point the translator in blue noted that they were speaking of the five precepts of Buddhism — respect for all life, do not steal, avoid sexual misconduct, do not lie and abstain from drug and alcohol abuse.

All good principles. We mean no disrespect when we suggest that a sixth might be to do good and honest labor that makes other people happy.

Camtu was hardly known outside the King Dragon. But she was immensely popular with anyone and everyone who came to her family’s restaurant for nourishment and fellowship. She set a standard.

And our loss makes us wonder how many other quiet treasures are working down the street today.

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Duffys Lock the Chateau Door

By Bernie Hunhoff


Pierre and Fort Pierre are not lacking for institutions, but South Dakota’s twin cities lost an important one this week when octogenarians Ed and Pat Duffy closed The Chateau Bar & Restaurant.

Ed is ill and Pat is supervising a nutrition program at the Community Center that provides more than a hundred meals a day to seniors in Fort Pierre. They had to give up something. The cowboys and politicians and bureaucrats are the losers.

Much state business and more than a few political compromises have been hashed out through the years at the Chateau and the nearby Silver Spur, a legendary watering hole started by Irish O’Leary in 1949. “Every great project, public or private, in central South Dakota had roots in that restaurant and a better man I’ve not seen in my lifetime,” said John Duffy, a local attorney and Ed’s nephew. “The Chateau was the home of South Dakota’s rodeo, horse racing and ranch cultures as well the blue-collar workforce.”

The O’Learys and Duffys gave the cow town an authentic Irish flavor. Pat Duffy worked for O’Leary before she married and partnered with Ed at the Chateau. “He taught me that if you have a problem, you make the problem leave,” she said. A “problem” is her politically-correct language for a problem customer.

She believes the Chateau prospered because Ed knows beef. “He did his own meat,” she said. “People would keep coming back for the the filet and the chicken fried steak, and the onion rings. They were always good and they were always the same.”

Before it was the Chateau, Ed ran Duffy’s Cafe from the 107-year-old brick building. That was during the Truman administration. He added an addition when he started the Chateau.

The big Duffy family gathered at the restaurant for a farewell dinner before they locked the front door.

But traditions die hard in Fort Pierre. A half-block away, carpenters are working on renovating the Silver Spur, which as been shuttered for several years. A local entrepreneur, Buell Mayberry, intends to reopen it soon.

And Pat says someone else is interested in possibly reopening the Chateau as a bar or restaurant.

That’s good news for local politicians and bureaucrats. There are never enough private nooks and crannies for deal-making in Fort Pierre or Pierre.

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South Dakota’s Best Breakfasts

By Katie Hunhoff

“A timid salesman has skinny kids,” quipped a sales consultant at a recent business meeting in Sioux Falls.

That may be especially true for salesmen in sparsely populated South Dakota, where you can literally run out of prospects and even restaurants. So the smart traveling salesman of the prairie makes the most of every day, every town, every mile.

And the experienced salesman knows the advantages of starting the day right, with a tasty breakfast enjoyed in a place where the locals meet — so we asked a few road veterans to share their favorite breakfast establishment as a travel tip for the rest of us.

Joie’s Cafe — Winner

Although Wayne Hopkins of Brookings sells electrical and air conditioning parts for Nielsen’s in a four state area, he chose a restaurant in his home town of Winner. “In the winter I’d go in the cafe, just a block from my school, to have a hot chocolate and warm up. It still looks the same as I remember it 30 years ago,” Hopkins says. His favorite item is the breakfast burrito.

Brock Green succeeded his father-in-law at Joie’s years ago. Special recipes for biscuits and gravy and made-from-scratch pancakes haven’t changed. He even has his own specialty sausage, made just for Joie’s at the local Super Duper Store.

The 140-seat Main Street cafe is a Winner mainstay that was called Sargent’s when Hopkins was growing up. Visitors are welcome to sit at the businessman’s roundtable, where locals shoot dice to see who picks up the noon tab. But be careful.”Usually it’s the new guy or the guy who only had soup that gets nailed,” laughs Green. Call 605-842-3788.

ALASKA CAFE — Lemmon

Lemmon is South Dakota’s northernmost city, but it’s still a far cry from the tundra so travelers are surprised to see the Alaska Cafe sign on Highway 12 and they often stop to pose for pictures.

Inside, they get an even better taste of the Land of the Midnight Sun. Pictures of grizzly bears, moose, the Bering Strait and North Pacific fishing boats grace the walls, and proprietor Laura Casey — who runs the cafe with her daughter, Breanna Thomas — has a big compass, the only surviving artifact of her father’s commercial halibut boat that was lost in a storm. Several years after the accident, Laura’s parents moved to Lemmon and she followed seven years ago and opened the restaurant.

Amy Pravecek of Winner chose the Alaska Cafe in Lemmon as her favorite breakfast spot because “everything on their menu is wonderful and the cafe is full of friendly locals who are always willing to visit,” she says.

Pravecek is the territory manager for Phizer in western South Dakota. She travels West River back roads visiting veterinarians, animal health distributors, farmers and ranchers, telling them about Phizer’s vaccination programs.

Alaska Cafe serves breakfast from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. The big breakfast is a country fried skillet with scrambled eggs, hash browns, chicken fried steak, country gravy and cheddar sauce. Pancakes are the size of big plates.

Pravecek likes to dine on the biscuits and gravy and then take a little walk through the petrified wood park across the street. She also recommends visiting Lemmon Livestock sale barn if you are in town on a Wednesday. Call 605-374-7588.

SPARKY’S — ISABEL

Sparky’s operates from a nondescript building on Isabel’s Main Street, which is busier than you might expect because it also sits along S.D. Highway 65, a north-south corridor that cuts across West River country.

Operated by Ryan Maher, a young entrepreneur and Republican state senator, the restaurant serves three meals a day and sometimes even provides the evening entertainment, which has ranged from karaoke and country bands to pool tournaments, goat-roping and an ugly sweater contest.

Monte James of Yankton chose Sparky’s for their “All American Breakfast” — two sausage patties, two eggs, wheat toast and homemade hashbrowns. “The food is off the charts,” says James, a territory manager for Sioux Steel Company. Sioux Steel is a fourth generation family-owned business that opened in 1918 and makes grain bins, livestock equipment and other steel supplies for farmers and ranchers across the world.

James also frequents Sparky’s while announcing for the Isabel Rodeo, which he has done for the last ten years. “The locals are friendly and fond of visitors,” he says. ” They will want to know all about your comings and goings. And as the name indicates, it is not only a grill but a bar as well and the nightlife at Sparky’s is legendary.” Call 605-466-2131.

Editor’s Note: You can find more delicious South Dakota breakfast options in our January/February 2013 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Get Fresh!

By Rebecca Johnson

When I went through my yoga teacher training, one of the homework assignments was a 30-day diet experiment. It was meant to be a food sadhana, teaching us to be more mindful of how we eat. Some classmates chose vegetarianism; some gave up sugar. I was eating a lot of microwave meals at the time — ones that claimed healthiness on the box but listed many ingredients I couldn’t pronounce — so my husband suggested ditching our microwave. Busy evenings were initially challenging, but we’re now microwave-free for five years. We purchase mainly whole ingredients and the food prep takes time, but I like knowing exactly what’s going into my mouth.

Sometimes we cave and get takeout, though. We’re not entirely virtuous. That’s why I’m a little jealous of the Mitchell community. Billy Mawhiney opened Get Fresh! Table and Market on Mitchell’s Main Street this month. It’s a partnership with his other venture, Time at the Table, that offers pre-made meals for delivery or pickup using fresh, local and organic ingredients. There is even a self-serve kitchen where you can prep ingredients according to their recipes.

Mawhiney wants people to connect with food and use food to connect with others by getting to know their local farmers and butchers. He also hopes families will use family dinner as a way to slow down in our crazy and sometimes frazzled lives.”It’s time we reclaim the dinner table to be the center of the home,” Mawhiney says.

He got the idea for Get Fresh! while living in Brooklyn, N.Y.”I could not afford to eat much, but the access to local, organic and fresh food was literally just a few blocks away.” Mawhiney keeps his 6-serving meals affordable by using similar ingredients in the weekly menus. They even accept SNAP (formerly known as food stamps).

The business is very new, but the gluten-free meals have already been very popular. Get Fresh! offers vegetarian and dairy free options, as well, and they hope to add some vegan dishes this summer. Mawhiney gives oven or slow cooker instructions for each dish.”Everything is one-step and I left out the microwave on purpose. We do not have one at Get Fresh!” he proclaims.

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Menno’s Open Door

By Katie Hunhoff

Bored with the homogenization of America’s restaurants? You’ll find culinary and cultural relief at the Open Door in Menno, where Rita Hoff has been serving German and farm country specialties since 1986.

Menno, a town of 780 in Hutchinson County, was settled by Germans from Russia.”We started getting requests for the foods we all grew up with,” Hoff explained.”Fleish kuchle is the favorite. It’s a big day when we serve it. I don’t think there is anybody who doesn’t show up.”

Hoff’s Tuesday menu always includes one or more German dishes. She bakes kuchen and donuts on Thursdays and serves a big buffet for the after-church crowd on Sundays. She and her husband, Jerome, alternate every Sunday: one goes to church and the other sets out the buffet.

The Open Door is a success story, but it would be hard to duplicate the dÈcor or the entrees. A dry erase board of customers’ birthdays, recipe cards, a WNAX gas station sign, historic photos of Menno and an eclectic coffee cup collection that advertises current and long-gone local businesses all add atmosphere, but they’re just frosting on the cake.

The food is the essence of the Open Door. This is not a frozen-fries-and-burgers grill. Hoff makes each dish from scratch, and summer produce comes from local gardens.”One week we got a whole box of beans that didn’t sell at the farmer’s market,” she said.”It helps with expenses and it gives everybody a chance to eat fresh food.” She seems apologetic when she acknowledges she occasionally has to open a can of vegetables, or that she has been tempted to buy pre-made foods like most restaurants depend on these days.

“One time a salesman talked me into buying ready-made stuff,” she said.”Man, people noticed right away. They said, ‘You didn’t make your own macaroni salad.’ So I can’t do that anymore.”

Running a small town restaurant seven days a week is a challenge — even with donated green beans and plenty of happy diners. But Rita Hoff has good help, from her husband, Jerome, a county commissioner and a school bus driver, and several part time workers.

Rita and Jerome close the Open Door after the Sunday buffet and enjoy an afternoon to themselves. They often make a trip to visit their children in Brandon and Tea, and usually end up at a restaurant. We wondered whether the prepared foods were a disappointment.”If I can sit down and have someone wait on me I’m not real particular,” she laughed.

Rita’s Fleish Kuchle

Rita has been running the Open Door for over 25 years and said this is the perennial favorite dish.”It’s also the easiest to make,” she said.”You kind of enjoy making it more because they like it more.”

Her advice for first time fleish kuchle makers is to not use all the flour right away.”The dough will get tough,” she says.”Sometimes it takes a lot of practice with the dough to get it right.”

Dough:

1 stick margarine
1 cup warm milk
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
4 cups flour — don’t add all

Melt margarine and cool. Add milk, baking power, salt and egg. Mix. Add flour (save 1/2 cup for working the dough).

Filling:

4 pounds hamburger
Salt, pepper, chopped onion and seasoning salt to taste.

Mix meat mixture together after adding spices to taste. Roll out dough to thickness of pie dough. Cut into 4″x 4″ squares. Put one heaping tablespoon of hamburger filling in center. Fold in half. Cut edges to seal. Fry at 350 degrees for 7 minutes.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2011 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.



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Eat Local…Bananas?

By Laura Johnson Andrews

Eating locally grown food in South Dakota just makes sense. This is a rich and fertile land, where backyard gardens, local farms and Community Supported Agriculture programs produce a vast array of delicious fruits, vegetables and grains. Why not take advantage of that bounty?

When we think about local and seasonal foods, tomatoes and sweet corn often pop to mind, but eating locally can be much more exotic. A Spearfish farm offered corn smut (yes, it’s edible!) to its CSA members last summer. One local gardener successfully raised peanuts in her community garden plot in Yankton a few years ago. Perhaps oddest of all, there’s an elegant restaurant in Rapid City that serves South Dakota-grown bananas.

A tropical fruit in South Dakota? Yes indeed — and they’re organic to boot. Pamela Light, executive chef and owner of the Wine Cellar Restaurant in Rapid City, spotted the bright yellow edibles on a stroll through Reptile Gardens‘ Sky Dome. After a chat with good friend and Reptile Gardens CEO Joe Maierhauser, Light secured the fruit for use in her restaurant. Once or twice a year, when the bananas are ripe, her staff incorporates them into dishes like banana cake, banana cheesecake, curried bananas, banana ice cream, banana pie, and more.

Bananas aren’t the only South Dakota-grown food on the Wine Cellar’s menu.”We always use Wild Idea Buffalo — it is local and grazed organically. Seasonally, all herbs and some tomatoes come from my backyard Wine Cellar Restaurant gardens. Chef Chris, my head chef, gathers wild morel and chanterelle mushrooms from the Black Hills. We also purchase produce at the various farmers’ markets in season,” Light said.

The restaurant’s ingredients list extends beyond South Dakota’s borders, of course. Light also shares the best fresh foods from other states she visits: Copper River salmon and halibut from Alaska, Minnesota wild rice, and black truffles, marble potatoes and artisan cheeses from Washington. Light said,”I always give credit to the state these fresh items come from, as it is exciting to me to be able to share these things that you just cannot find locally. Bringing them in to share in our little city is wonderful! Everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy the freshest roadside produce there is as well as fresh seafood.”

The restaurant serves European & California-style cuisine, with elegant-sounding dishes like veal tortellacci alfredo, Calvados smoked duck sausage and porcini sacchette with porchini cream. As one might guess from the name, the Wine Cellar Restaurant has another specialty, offering over 50 wines available by the glass, plus an extensive selection of bottles.”I change [our wine list] about 50% twice a year so I can share all the different wines that are available to me with Rapid City,” Light said.

Like some of her ingredients, Light is an import herself. She was raised in Minneapolis, but her family moved to the west coast when in high school. In the mid 1990s, she decided to look for a smaller community to raise her two children.”Rapid City and the Black Hills seemed like a great place to come since we are active in outdoor activities.”

The move was a success. The Wine Cellar Restaurant just celebrated its 12th anniversary in Rapid City’s historic downtown, about a half a block away from Main Street Square. The restaurant is located in a building over one hundred years old, with hardwood floors and tin ceilings. Linen tablecloths, candles and fresh flowers create a inviting atmosphere.

But thinking about that atmosphere raised one question. In their intimate, historic surroundings, amongst all the fresh and fancy food, had Light, Chef Chris and the rest of the Wine Cellar staff ever discovered any stowaways in the Reptile Gardens banana supply?

“Thank God, no,” Light said.


The Wine Cellar Restaurant is located at 513 Sixth Street, Rapid City, SD. Call 605-718-CORK (2675) or visit www.winecellarrestaurant.com for reservations.

Pamela Light shared this “simple but really great” recipe for curried bananas. She suggests serving it with jasmine or basmati rice and Mediterranean spiced and grilled chicken, pork tenderloin or pork chops.

Curried Bananas

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon curry powder, or more to taste
1/4 teaspoon garam masala
4 large bananas sliced in half lengthwise, then in half again

Heat butter in a large saute pan over medium high heat. Add the spices and stir until well blended and butter is bubbly. Add all the bananas and saute, carefully turning often to coat with the spiced butter. Gently cook until hot but NOT mushy (just a few minutes). Remove to individual plates and drizzle the pan sauce over the bananas and rice. Serves 4.

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Land of Infinitely Interesting Eateries

By Katie Hunhoff

Our magazine’s writers literally savored the opportunity to explore the far reaches of South Dakota earlier this year for a big feature on the state’s ethnic restaurants. We visited dozens of interesting restaurants, and along the way we discovered that entrepreneurism is prospering in our towns and cities

Every restaurant had a story, but Maria Pontiero told us one of the best. She runs Nucci’s Italian Bistro in Sioux Falls, but the story of the bistro began long ago in Italy when a young man named Gaetano Pontiero moved to the United States after WWII.

The Pontieros had been farmers in Italy, and Gaetano dreamed of continuing that tradition in his new country. When he learned of land for sale in South Dakota, he moved to Kimball. He and his brother ran a restaurant there for 20 years and Gaetano saved his money until he could buy a farm. Then he traveled to Italy to find a bride. He courted a pretty girl named Rita and six months later he brought her to his new Kimball farm.

They had a daughter, Maria, who grew up amid cattle, sheep, goats and rabbits. Rita loved to cook, so she worked at several restaurants around Kimball when she was not busy on the farm. When Gaetano finally retired, the family moved to Sioux Falls to fulfill Rita’s dream of having her own Italian restaurant. They put together a cozy little place in a strip mall at 57th & Western on the south side of town, and today Maria helps her mom serve sandwiches, lasagna, pasta and other specialties to happy customers. They call it Nucci’s, a term of endearment in Rita’s native Calabria.

Everywhere we went, we found equally interesting restaurateurs. At Gregory, Joe Nguyen and his family run The Homesteader. With a name like that, you expect to find good steaks and you will. But The Homesteader chefs also serve kung pao chicken and other Asian treats. The walls show off the work of Burke taxidermist Pete Liewer.

In Brookings we met the Theodosopoulus family, owners of a three-generation Greek eatery called George’s Pizza. The founders, Spiro and Yoita, still show up every morning to make their special sauces and doughs.

Robert Wong, one of the world’s great nature photographers, exhibits his pictures in a Chinese restaurant he runs with his wife, Ying, on Mount Rushmore Drive in Rapid City.

Retired soccer star Sidney Zanin runs Guadalajara in Pierre, along with his wife Elizabeth. German immigrant Waldraut “Wally” Matush started serving wiener schnitzel, bratwurst and filet mignon at Hill City’s Alpine Inn in 1974. Today her daughter Monika manages the restaurant.

Hungry yet? Walleye and steak will always be our staples but when it comes to eating, South Dakota has truly become the Land of Infinite Variety.

Editor’s note: South Dakota’s ethnic eateries were featured in the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call us at 800-456-5117.